Have Idling Sheriff Cars Wasted More than $1 Million?

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

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In direct violation of county policy, Santa Barbara Sheriff’s deputies often leave their patrol cars idling when they’re parked, a practice that has burned more than $1.25 million in gas and generated tons of emissions since 2008. Those are the findings of a short but pointed Grand Jury report published this week that took the Sheriff’s Office to task for “unnecessary cost to the county’s taxpayers.”

In their defense, Sheriff’s officials explained to the Grand Jury that patrol cars are left idling because their computer systems — including dash cams — need to be on at all times. Plus, they said, if a car is turned off and the computers shut down, it takes three to four minutes for them to boot back up. That’s an unacceptably long amount of time, especially in an emergency situation, officials said.

“This explanation ignores several concerns,” the Grand Jury stated in its report. An unattended and idling car, even if its locked, is vulnerable to theft, and the vehicles contain expensive equipment and at least two guns, the report reads. The vehicles are also retired earlier than usual because of the added wear and tear on their engines. That’s on top of the fiscal and environmental concerns.

The county policy, drafted in 2008 to reduce pollution and wasted fuel, states that keys shouldn’t be left in unattended vehicles and that cars shouldn’t idle for more than five straight minutes, except under certain circumstances. “None of the exemptions, except for K-9 vehicles, appears to apply to non-emergency situations,” asserts the report, which included the following calculations performed last year by the county’s Department of General Services: The Sheriff’s Office deploys 30 patrol units per shift, and there are two shifts per day. The deputies drive 4.6-liter V8 Crown Victorias that use around 0.8 gallons of gas for every hour they idle. Pricing fuel at $4.05 per gallon, and estimating that vehicles idle an average of three hours every shift, the General Services staff said the idling fuel cost is $583 a day, or $207,152 a year.

A new “Secure-Idle” battery monitoring system was installed in a single patrol car in March — it features an alarm and “auto start” feature that’s supposed to reduce overall idling time — and the trial period was expected to take around a month. It’s not clear how it panned out. The Grand Jury also noted other options are available to the Sheriff’s Office to fix the problem, like alternate, uninterruptible power sources that would keep the computer systems on even if the car is turned off. It would cost around $36,000 to equip the entire patrol fleet with such devices, the Grand Jury estimated.

Accusing the Sheriff’s Office of dragging its feet to enact some kind of remedy, the Grand Jury said it “encourages” the agency to come up with savings solutions with “more vigor.” Sheriff’s spokesperson Kelly Hoover said the agency is in the process of responding to the report — it has 60 days to officially address the findings — and is unable to comment at this time.

Comments

It would seem obvious to have the equipment required "to be on at all times" connected to a direct power source other than the main car battery when it would only cost $36,000 to install such equipment vs the estimated $200k annually to idle the vehicles. I do not think the sheriff's department is incompetent so maybe there's another reason that will come out in their official response. For the sake of conversation (pure speculation), maybe there's a connection between funding, backroom oil deals, and the amount of gas they use annually. I have to assume if the Sheriff could save $170K by installing the direct power supply they would be all over that, why the first wave of resistance?

Lots of estimates and guesses by the Grand Jury here, so I doubt if the potential savings are as much as the GJ is guessing they would be. In my day when the price of gasoline got high we were encouraged to park the patrol cars and walk more each shift. I'm not a fan of the current sheriff, but IMO this is nit-picking on a grand scale.

My pet peeve is seeing cops flooring it all the time . We've all seen it ...following behind cops who floor it from the green light , just to be sitting there at the next red with everybody else. Obviously the pedal goes to the metal on emergencies , but not when they are racing to meet their buddies for breakfast at the restaurant. See it all the time. Who cares right? It's only taxpayers money.

I would like to know the age and occupation of each member of the grand jury. Dealt with quite a few GJ members in the past and they left me wondering how some of them can walk and breath at the same time. Just give them a pretty ball and send them outside to play.

While we're at it, can we please train people - cops and civilians alike - not to "top off" their gas tanks when filling? The pump clicks off when the tank is full. Pumping in another few clicks of gas costs you money but doesn't gain you range. That's because the excess gasoline evaporates from the filler neck, causing smog pollution, and potentially damaging the vehicle and pump vapor recovery systems.Every time your kid has an asthma attack, thank the willfully ignorant bozos who insist on topping off.

I got one, replace the on-board computers with charging stations for when the squad car is moving and employ a Tablet with Satellite Capability and a printer application to print out tickets. The aging computers on squad cars is taxing and slow (Boot-up time over Three to Four minutes...), as for the Dash cams, which the recorders are kept in the Patrol cars trunk, could also be running on a Nickle-Cad battery without loosing recording connection. Task the Sheriff's Department with looking into Federal Equipment hand-me-downs through GSA Services in getting the Tablets; http://www.govliquidation.com/http://gsaauctions.gov/gsaauctions/gs...http://www.govdeals.com/http://www.armor-x.com/#!ipad-2-3-4-n...These sites are excellent starting points to begin with, consult the California State version of GSA to locate further services but I don't they carry any newer equipment, since their so broke too!As for the idling cars, especially at night to keep the lights on the suspects car (Head lights on high beam, both spot-lights, one on the passengers in the back seat and the other on the front passenger), there is no easier way around that issue, the vehicle has to be running for that much light to be put out there (personal experience). For those of us who think the GJ is too aged? Maybe some of us young ones should sign-up to serve?

Another example of pigs violating the law and doing whatever they please to wipe their a$$ with your tax dollars. Since 2008 the entire dept has systematically broken the law and blown your loot, and the defense is "but it's more convenient." This cop worshiping culture makes me puke.

I'm so sick & tired of Bill Brown & his department always crying poor & demanding the County to do it his way or else we citizens are going to die at the hands of thugs & suffer mayhem. ENOUGH, Sheriff Brown!

Here's another reason to vote YES on Measure M2014. Brown & his blindly loyal followers want us to think if the County maintains roads & parks at the level they should, that mayhem will ensue.

"Sorry to disappoint you, "gluten-free" appears to be just another fad, very few people have celiatic disease."

Actually Ken, that study was a complete farce. What they did was give people pills that contained isolated gluten instead actually giving them products that contain gluten, as products that contain gluten also contain elevated levels of other harmful proteins like gliadin. When people say "gluten free" they don't just mean gluten free for the sake of gluten, there are other MORE HARMFUL substances in gluten products that weren't included or tested at all in this study that you are referring to.

The lesson you should be learning is that pretty much everything the mainstream media says is a fabrication, staged or a lie. The other lesson you should learn is that I'm always going to be ahead of the curve on the matters of food and diet.

Idling vehicles are HUGE wasters of gasoline. Most fleet managers for private companies have GPS tracking/logging software installed on all fleet vehicles. It alerts the fleet manager to an idling vehicle when it's idling more than a designated time (typically 5 or 10 minutes) and many of these software packages allow the fleet manager to remotely turn off the vehicle.

In this case, for an investment of $36K (perhaps they can even get this from their privately-funded foundation) they can outfit all the vehicles with battery systems and not idle the cars. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

@touristunfriendly, the Independent is anything but these days. They endorse whomever the party leaders tell them to endorse. No "Independent" thinking allowed these days.

@validated, I'm not sure who the GJ members are, but they're always advertising for new members so why not put your money where your mouth is and become a GJ member?

Gasoline is a dirty 19th century technology, that much of the USA's policies seem to be beholden to burn as much as possible. Please check out the massive book, "Suppressed Inventions" by Jonathan Eisen.

If the computers are based on standard PC technology, an incremental solution (if that's what they want) is to retrofit the hard drives with solid-state drives. That could drastically reduce boot times and reduce power consumption at the same time.

If there's room under the hood, another option is to look into using dual-batteries wired in parallel. Offroad 4x4 enthusiasts often do this to provide extra juice for operating their winches. The upside here is you can run the batteries with the engine off for longer periods of time. But this might only get you an extra hour or so, depending on the current draw of all that equipment.

A solar panel on the roof might not be practical at this time since the trickle current wouldn't be very high. There would also be maintenance issues.

You might be able to get better power savings by replacing subsystems of the equipment, but then you get into larger cost tradeoffs. The devils in the details.

What about the regular Joes/Josephines that sit in their vehicles, engines idling, so that they can check their texts, keep their AC going and play their car stereos? I bet the driving populace (other than LE) wastes a ton of fuel, out of pure ignorance.

Ann Landers (harking back a while, now) told us an idling engine is polluting. I think she had that in her column back when we still had lights at Hwy 101. Why are so many people still unaware of the fact that an idling engine is extremely polluting? Maybe the Indie's article will help spread the word.

Wouldn't adding batteries increase the time that systems could be "off the grid" ( car alternator)

Is it possible for the high tech geeks in Goleta to design and manufacture a thin film solar panel appliqué for the roof of a police car to extend the charge of batteries in the day light?

How about reducing the brightness of the blue lights at night? As a motorist, I can barely see the road when passing a parked police car. I would think that would increase the risk to a cop.

Oh by the way, the Marines are leading the military in using alternative energy to support daily combat operations. They are using solar to eliminate batteries in their packs which reduce the weight. (Which reduces their calorie and water requirements which further lightening their packs....). This approach also reduces the fuel requirements at forward fire bases (gas costs ~$400 per gallon if you track ALL the costs. (In Iraq, at CENTCOM we also tracked causalities per 1 million gallons delivered..... That started to wake people up....)